Evan Vucci/AP Photo
President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport, October 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv.
Joe Biden, a famously risk-averse politician, has never taken a bigger risk than his mission to Israel.
If everything breaks just right, Biden could head off an Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza, averting thousands more civilian casualties and a costly and inconclusive Israeli “victory.” He could begin the process of getting Israeli hostages returned; head off the risks of a regional war; get the process of Saudi normalization with Israel back on track; and expedite the urgently needed departure of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Just to list these goals, all of which are interconnected, is to remind ourselves of all the ways the mission could go wrong. In the Mideast, events have a way of spinning out of control.
Biden has already had to forgo his planned meeting in Jordan with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. It was the Arab side that canceled.
“There is no use in talking now about anything except stopping the war,” Jordanian foreign minister Ayman Safadi said on state television. Reporters were told that Biden would now speak with these leaders from his flight back to Washington, a lame second-best. He could have done that from the Oval Office.
Biden’s risky calculation, in flying to Israel, is that by even more closely identifying the United States with Israel’s agony and needed security, he increases his leverage on Netanyahu to avoid further blunders and civilian suffering in Gaza. Israel has already agreed to let humanitarian relief into Gaza, via Egypt, but that depends on Egypt’s cooperation, yet another stumbling block.
And of course, the need for humanitarian relief is itself the consequence of Israel’s blockade and bombardment. It’s weird for the U.S. to be endorsing both the attacks and relief of the suffering caused by the attacks.
We don’t know exactly what Biden and his advisers have said privately. We do know that Israel’s occupying force was militarily ready to invade several days ago, but the invasion keeps being postponed, presumably at U.S. request. But publicly, Biden stands with Israel, more than ever in today’s meeting with Netanyahu.
Here’s the bind. If Israel does invade and occupy Gaza, even in a truncated manner, U.S. fingerprints will be on the deed. It’s one thing for the U.S. to support Israel’s security and share Israel’s anguish, as Biden has vividly done. It’s something else entirely to be identified with a Gaza invasion because Biden failed to stop it.
Even if the invasion doesn’t go forward, what then? By standing down and looking either indecisive or like a pawn of Biden, Netanyahu would want something significant in return. But it’s far from clear what Biden can deliver.
Biden can help facilitate the beginning of a process leading to the safe return of hostages, but the best case is that this will take weeks or months of negotiation over a trade for Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons. Biden can double down on pressure in Iran to keep Hezbollah from invading Israel’s northern border, but Biden presumably is already doing that.
More likely, Biden would have to make Israel even more of a full-blown U.S. protectorate, including a commitment for unprecedented direct U.S. military involvement in the event of a regional war, and hope that this acts as a deterrent.
The best case for Biden, both as a diplomat and as a candidate for re-election in 2024, is that he avoids a diplomatic and military fiasco. Anything that looks like success will be long in coming. This is not the stuff of a Nobel Peace Prize.
